It's pretty much a cliche when we compare poker to life, but really, it IS so much like life in so many levels that you can't deny the truth in the sayings. Poker is a microcosm of life.

Life is the dealer that shuffles your deck, and whatever cards youre given, you gotta play it. Sometimes you get premium hands, win nice pots, and have a healthy stack. There are days when nothing can seem to go wrong and you feel like youre on top of the world. But you can also get a bad run of cards, with heart-breaking bad beats that just wrenches your gut and make you want to pull your hair out. I'm pretty sure everybody has their own version of these things, and I myself have several experiences that fall into these categories.

But, like poker, it's not WHAT cards you get, but how you play it. Like my favorite poker quote says, "Only losers blame the cards." One thing most poker players hate are bad beat stories, and i've heard and had enough of those to last me a lifetime. For me, with life, i hate "bad beat" stories too. If something bad happened to you, dont throw a pity party for yourself, because everyone has their own problems to deal with. Play your cards! Deal with the cold deck. Life goes on. The next hand is coming and you gotta keep playing. Will you stop playing a tournament just because you got a bad beat? nope. But you have the choice to either suck it up and take it like a man, or whine like a crybaby, go on tilt, and blow off your entire stack on stupid decisions. Dont blow off your entire life with stupid decisions just because you had some bad experiences. The only thing that matters is how you played your cards. As long as you have a chip to play with, youre still in the game. You gotta keep playing.

Poker really is a mirror of life. How you play reflects how you live, how you are as a person deep inside. The beauty of it is, if you have a firm grasp of the intricacies involved in the game and know how to play the game at it's highest level, it will also reflect in how you live your life. When youve learned to accept bad beats as nothing but the uncontrollable fall of the cards, you start to treat events in your life as the same thing, Life unfolding like a deck of cards. Once you learn how to make the most out of both your good cards AND bad cards, you also learn how to make the most out of your good AND bad experiences.

I have to admit that i only have a feeble grasp of what i'm talking about, but it's a start. It all starts with awareness anyway. I'm using this wisdom i learned from, of all things, poker, as i write this article down. I'm going through a pretty bad run of cards right now, and the beats just keep on coming. And im not talking about poker.

Variance in poker is like variance in life, and because of a simple game of cards, i know what i have to do.

I gotta keep playing.

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